What the hell were they doing asking a renowned historian like this to deliver this lecture, when they should have asked several thousand self appointed TH-cam experts to lecture them instead? Fools!
Actually, I was wondering why they even bother teaching History at colleges any more. With TH-cam and a couple hours, I can become an expert on anything!
@@petemommo9622I was trying to remember if it was The Right Stuff or Dr. Strangelove. Classic line either way and completely true. The Germans not only had the brain trust to build The Bomb long before we did but it was never prioritized. In the movie Oppenheimer it's cast as Nazi anti-Semitism being the accidental savior and reason they didn't get the bomb; the truth was that Heisenberg wasn't given the mandate or resources to do it. Whether that was ideological or the German command staff thought they didn't need such a weapon isn't certain, but when US spy (and major league catcher) Moe Berg attended a lecture and talked with Heisenberg in Zurich in 1943 (with orders to shoot and kill Heisenberg on the spot if Berg concluded the Germans were getting close to having a bomb) the conclusion was that not only were they not close but there wasn't even a coherent program to make one anytime soon. Nevertheless, it's so scary to think about how a small handful of decisions could have swayed the outcome of WW2 and how different the world would be today had that happened.
@@otofoto If it were not for the strength of 27 million Soviet guys, Hitler's Nazism would have burned many more people in the furnaces of concentration camps than 6 million Jews and 9 million Soviet citizens. But this cannot be explained to a Nazi.
And trying to do this with a dysfunctional centrally planned economy was a huge mistake to go with it. Albert Speer worked "miracles" in increasing production. Not as "miraculous" as the immense productivity of American industry, but some tremendous increases in output? What was this "miracle"? He dismantled restrictions placed by the Nazi bureaucracy that were holding everything back.
Well, needing war materials shipped in from overseas and getting into a war with the largest naval power in the world kind of compounds that. It is fair to point to the types and organization of armor in the British and French armies (mostly organization and use) and the difficulties in fighting the Germans after they achieved a breakthrough (dealing with German mobile warfare tactics), and say the British and French were not prepared for the war they were going to have to fight. But it is also fair to point out that Germany wasn't prepared for a war with Britain, having no reasonable means of knocking Britain out of the war. The naval blockade bled Germany. They needed more oil than Romania could provide, but the blockade prevented import from Venezuela (with over 4 times the oil output of Romania). Germany could have beaten USSR, if not for this blockade and the need to keep large forces in France and Norway, and the massive losses to the Luftwaffe from the Battle of Britain. A thorn in Germany's side.
@@iansneddon2956 There's a billion nuanced details that guaranteed a Nazi defeat to the British empire, but people only look at the battle of Britain and sort of imagine Britain as this helpless damsel in distress
Hitler had no choice. They'd already occupied most of Eastern Europe and initiated a trade embargo. And newly created, at the Treaty of Versailles, Poland, was raping and slaughtering Germans in the Danzig corridor...50,000 Germans. He was surrounded from all sides and cut off. And the Bolsheviks, having arranged the largest military buildup in history all ain't the Eastern European border, were coming. Any attempt to say it was Hitler's mistakes that caused their eventual defeat is short sighted and stupid, where the ENTIRE world was arrayed against her, as funded by those terrible enemies of European Christianity.
Thanks. That’s almost as useful as a mathematics textbook that only tells you to “count carefully.”😂 sometimes your advice is so vague and broad that you might as well have said nothing at all.
@@scerpalman LOL, they appear "wannabe strong," which isn't appearing strong. It's"fake strength." Their ability to create fakes by copying others' technology & doctrine is world renowned...as crappy copies.
Sun tzu’s manual was only applicable for his time period. Does modern military use doctrines from the 1700s? His manual today is only useful for morons to quote to make themself seem more intelligent than they actually are. So tired of all this sun tzu garbage. You have zero life lessons to learn from a military manual from any time period.
I’d be wary to trust this speech. The presenter talks about strategy but doesn’t even mention the letter from the German armaments minister to Hitler in 1941 which said in no uncertain terms that Germany had six months of fuel reserves left and then they would be forced to DEMOBOLIZE. The invasion of Russia was a strategic move to drive for the oil in the caucuses but the generals wanted to capture Moscow and fought Hitler which resulted in a drive North instead of concentrating South on the oil fields. Ideology played a part but it was mostly propaganda to fuel the fire, not the underlying cause of the decision to invade. That this wasn’t even mentioned makes me very concerned because there is no way this historian hasn’t seen these primary sources. Besides, everyone knows the “we lost the war because of Hitler’s meddling” story was invented by surviving generals post-war in their memories to make themselves look better.
21:07 The ignorance of cold and its drastic effects on people's health, while pretending to be able to tough it out, is one of the most teaching elements. It seems such a benign boasting, which many people still do today, yet it shows how being realistic can also mean looking "weak" in the eyes of delusional people.
i might get side-eyed for this one but i can’t think of a better example of unhealthy patriarchal bs hurting men. “real men can survive subzero war conditions in shorts” could be a south park bit, it staggers me how many men have had to suffer on this planet for being held to such inhuman standards masquerading as strength
Guderian visited the Soviet Union in 1938 and wrote a report to higher staffs in the Wehrmacht, warning about the much better than anticipated tank force they had. It was ignored. That is what politics do to military leadership. You can observe this in the US nowadays and elsewhere too, I guess 😂😂
That's not the whole story. Soviets were able to concentrate on tanks as their fighters, trucks and I think locomotives were supplied by the US, and German morale on the front was being sapped by constant news of the homeland being bombed, which also cut German production. Take away lend-lease, or take away the bombing campaign, and the Germans wouldn't have been turned at Kursk, would have taken Baku's oil, have hung on in Stalingrad and advanced into Moscow. Guderian couldn't have foreseen lend-lease nor the Eighth Air Force so arguably his conclusions were correct.
@@lqr824 I am not touching other factors, playing out in later war years. I just hint an ignored fact by Hitler and today's pseudo-hindsight war ananlytics. You don't have to praise your US lend and lease psyops in me as well...Your Eight Air force did not turn the war 20 km in front of Moscow. Get off Discovery Channel 😂
I was on a run while listening to this and the adrenaline from my eardrums being blasted to shreds made me run 2 miles further than I had anticipated lol
When Germany broke its pact with Stalin and invaded the USSR, Stalin feared doom for his regime if Japan, which already occupied China, invaded the Soviet Far East. Fortunately for Stalin, the Soviet dictator had a highly effective nest of spies among the Japanese: Richard Sorge, a German; Hotsumi Ozaki, a Japanese journalist; and Kinkazu Saionji, a Japanese political operative. As M. Stanton Evans details in _Blacklisted By History_, this circle of Soviet spies succeeded (or assisted) in persuading the Japanese government to strike south into Southeast Asia, rather than north into the Soviet Far East. Meanwhile Soviet spies in the US such as Lauchlan Currie lobbied FDR to seek an accommodation with Tokyo. This all took place in 1941. We will never know how differently events would have turned out if Germany and Japan had joined forces to crush the USSR in a pincer movement, Western forces were not drawn into East Asia to defend against Japan, and the US had stayed out of the Pacific war because Pearl Harbor never happened.
I've heard it said that at various points during WW2, Allied forces had the ability to take Hitler out using either sneak attacks or some clandestine operation, but it was far enough into the overt conflict that the Allied powers realized that Hitler was such a colossally bad strategist, and tied up in ideological foolishness and internal power disputes, that it ironically made more sense to keep him in charge, because if he'd been taken out, almost ANYONE who'd have replaced him would've done a much better job and potentially cost the Allies the war.
Idk. There has to be more to the story that we’re not told. Like was it dresden or some city of civilians that was totally destroyed by the allied powers but didn’t need to be. There were lots of war crimes committed by the west. French raped as many people as the soviets. I did read there’s a secret cemetery that holds a hundred Americans convicted and killed for war crimes in Europe. Maybe hitler was a bad at strategy, but like then ya got operation paper clip and the U.S. taking back thousands of war criminals etc and some nazis later in life working in nato. Canada gave an applause to a nazi this past year cause he fought Russia haha. Then ya got ties from people in the federal reserve that had relatives in the central bank of Germany. It’s like that smells fishy.
@@koltoncrane3099 There was really no reason to bring whataboutism into this thread. Hitler sucked at strategy, that's all that really needs to be said.
@@koltoncrane3099 Was this guy a confirmed Nazi or was he just an average German soldier? Some people use Nazis for any standard German, not realizing that tons of Germans fought in the war that where not Nazis nor did they believe in them.
Excellent talk and delivered with an absolute minimum of notes . The point about ideology trumping sound military strategy is well made and entirely plausible.
What a fantastic lecture. Liked that the lecturer himself was a touch nervous, he must've known the caliber of his audience then & they must've been some learned people. GREAT WORK TEACH!
Recycled British wartime propaganda is not fantastic. He does make his lecture interesting by it's delivery, but content wise it falls a bit flat. He did have some factual points like the Nazis not understanding America and that Hitler clung too tightly to ideology at the expense of sensible strategy. Also he had some other good point but here was working to continue to make sure the view of the British establishment remained the dominant view.
I ve lived in a cold part of Canada all my life. Just as cold as Russia. But I’ve never heard of case of someone’s eyelids falling off due to frostbite or cold. Ears and nose , toes and fingers freeze, but not eyelids… Just doesn’t happen. This makes me question all his other opinions and observations.
Not listening to generals was never a reason why Hitler lost the war. His generals said tanks won't be able to penetrate France's forests, yet he didn't listen to them and attacked, taking out France. Loyalty was also a good thing, cause no matter how good the specialist is, if they're against you, you're doomed
Interesting topic, thanks for the analysis! I would also say that Hitler bribed his Generals with lavish cash amounts and confiscated estates to get them to agree with him. Guderian wanted his confiscated Polish estate back after the war!
High on my (uninformed) list of missed opportunities was Hitler's failure to persuade Franco to attack or allow Germany to attack Gibraltar (from the land). Franco used the Luftwaffe to win the civil war and yet the terms or behaviour of both parties failed to form an agreement. The fall of Gibraltar would have changed the N.Africa campaign and the attack on Sicily.
If Spain were not "neutral", it would have opened up being attacked through both Italy and Spain. Spain was heavily weakened by the Civil War, and relied on the US for a lot of imports. An Axis Spain would have been a weakness.
On the surface it does seem like a missed opportunity, but looking into the events, there was little hope for the germans. Spain was still effectively a pile of rubble incapable of waging war on the scale of the second world war, a fact franco knew all too well. The person responsible for diplomacy with the Spanish was Wilhelm canaris, chief of the abwehr (german intelligence agency), who was very much against the war and nazism, so he would intentionally point out Germany's shortcomings and play up allied strength to franco to stop him from joining the axis, his work was instrumental in dashing any hopes of spanish participation. Franco would use the insider information to demand extensive aid to spain for her to join the war, which hitler was unwilling to give. These factors, combined with spanish, italian and french disputes in the Mediterranean and africa all cemented Spain's neutrality
It could have made an impact in the Mediterranean, but it very likely would not have affected Normandy, nor would it have affected the eastern front at all. The Germans needed to capture the Suez Canal to hurt allied commercial shipping, I don't think Spain would have gotten them to that strategic objective. Their lack of supplies is the biggest factor in the failure of North Africa, they also did not have the dominating manpower nor the resolve the British seemed to show in holding the canal. Like I said though, it doesn't change the eastern front in the slightest, which ultimately was the biggest threat. Germans needed better logistics which may have been possible if they had mechanized? But they flat out needed more oil and even steel, they quite simply could not manufacture equipment at a fast enough rate. Sabotage and aerial bombings wore their manufacturing down, until they ran out of fuel, equipment, territory to retreat, and men.
In all fairness, in addition to ideology, the Red Army looked incompetent and weak in Finland. Also, it can be argued that it was a pre-emptive strike. How long could a Nazi Germany and USSR, two polarized police states, share a peaceful border? If Stalin had more time to build up and improve his own Red Army, would he not come knocking or making demands on Hitler? That fight was going to happen sooner or later.
he does put all his sources in the description so you can just look it up (if you remember the particular video) I'm no longer a big TIK fan, but he's easily more educated on the eastern front than the guy giving this lecture
There are so many variables in play that it’s difficult to summarize. If you had a supercomputer, you might begin to model a world war …. Maybe. Looking back, some things are hard to believe. The US shipped Soldiers directly to war zones with no training. Congress eventually insisted that all Soldiers get some training. DePuy, Gorman, and Kanner created the later training revolution, but they made IMO one large mistake. The TRADOC training base would train individual tasks and units would train collective tasks. LTG Bown later included the ten days of war as the ENDEX at the Armor Ctr. Today DARPA created SIMNET which allows simulated large scale force-on-force training.while the NTC allows company level force on force training. Getting back to WW2, a huge variable was logistics…. Germany faced huge problems supplying units across immense distances with poor infrastructure.
That's easy. He stopped attacking RAF airfields and started attacking English cities. Thus enabling RAF to grow stronger and win Battle of Britain which denied him German air cover over English Channel. So his boats were unable to cross the channel without being attacked by British aircraft.
Not quite... he never wanted war with Britain DID NOT have the resources to occupy Britain... he loved the British people and saw them as "Civilized and honorable people" he was genuinely shocked when they declared war on him because they did NOT benefit from it. He even let them escape when their backs were to the sea at one point, he let them bomb his nation for weeks before he responded, the entire time he was suing for peace. Rudolph Hess parachuted into Scotland to make peace, they arrested him for LIFE, then just before he was due for release at age 93, he was found strangled to death in his cell. . . This is all documented. Watch Zoomer Historian here on YT for an unbiased look. A LOT of propaganda surrounds WWI and WWII.
@@aResoluteProtectorif he didn’t want war with britain then he shouldn’t have invaded Poland. Britain was guaranteeing poland against invasion. If Hitler thought that the British were “civilized and honorable” then he should’ve known that they would honor their word and go to war to defend Poland. If your theory is accurate then it makes Hitler incredibly stupid.
@@aResoluteProtectorhe didn’t let the troops at dunkirk escape The French Belgians and panzers running out of fuel did Not that it would matter as it was the Royal Navy and air force that won the war
@@johnny4221But they didn’t go to war to defend Poland. Britain and France declared war on Germany as a formality. They didn’t do anything to actually assist Poland. Hell, they never even bothered declaring war on the USSR when it invaded Poland two weeks after Germany. Hitler’s goal was to reestablish German borders to pre-Versailles and reintegrate the German diaspora. He never wanted to conquer the world and he didn’t think Britain and the U.S. would be stupid enough to ally themselves with the Soviets. The entire war was a farce. We went to war to “liberate Europe” and then had no problem with ending the war with the Soviets controlling half the continent.
@@kungfoochicken08 There was no saving Poland, the allies Britain and France knew this. But they also knew Germany wasn't going to stop at Poland. And there was no war against the USSR for them to join in the first place, the Soviets only went in after the Polish government fled the country and Polish troops had orders not to fire on the Soviets. Europe was liberated from fascism, the goal of the war was achieved. That's not a farce. The allies never fought in any of the places the Soviets demanded control over at Yalta. The soviets did most of the work, lost way more than any of the other allies, and what they got control over was fair by comparison. "Re-establishing Germany's pre-Versailles borders" meant taking Alsace Lorraine (which was only German territory since the Franco-Prussian war before then) from France, even if Britain ignored Poland they were always going to defend France. Thinking they'd sit idly by would be pure stupidity. And of course the allies would ally with the Soviets if the Soviets were attacked by Germany too. A common enemy makes a hell of a good reason for an alliance. There's no logic to what you're saying, you're just trying really hard to be charitable to Hitler for whatever reason despite there being simply no logical defence for his actions.
Hitler could have taken Moscow if Japan attacked Siberia. That would be the end. The soviets would have been demoralized. There’s no way they would continue fighting on after that right? Right??
So my big issue with this lecture is that while yes towards the end of the war he was making bad calls and essentially destroying the army we forget that at the start of the war his officers were making bad calls and he was over ruling them in some cases saving the german army take for example the battle of Moscow had they retreated the army would have been destroyed in the same kind of march that destroyed the grand army over 100 years ago but having them dig in gave them much needed shelter and a fighting chance against the red army divisions that were starting to bear down on them an example of when he didn't do this was before the battle of Kursk he was quoted as saying that thinking of the operation made him sick to his stomach and he felt like it would have been a blood bath and he was right I do feel like I must reiterate that this was early to mid war later on he was over ruling the wrong orders and making the bad calls that we're used to this lecture while full of good quotes and good history at times screams of the post war memoirs written by former generals who pinned all their failures and warcrimes on Mr. H or the officers who died
That has NOTHING to do with WW2. Migration in the UK only really started in the 1990s and 2000s as the population was aging and child birth slowing down and that just comes with better quality of life, Germany even if Hitler had won WW2 would also slow down as the economy advanced over time you see the same in Japan, in China, in France in Russia, all of the countries follow the same path, as the economy advances child birth goes down leading to a demand for migration to fill the missing shoes. Germany started early with migration from Turkey and UK later in the 1990s-2000s. What has happened after 2000 until today has nothing to do with WW2. Keep in mind that China and Japan do not allow migration and as a result their future population outlook is VERY VERY bad. Japan will lost 1/3 of population and China 1/2 by 2100. Germany if Hitler had won the war would be today a much smaller population without any migration.
Thank you, Professor. I just looked up the “Führer's Principle” that you mentioned early. Here it is for other Google scholars: The “Führerprinzip (German: [ˈfyːʀɐpʀɪnˌtsiːp], the leader principle) prescribed the fundamental basis of political authority in the Government of Nazi Germany, understood to mean that "the Führer's word is above all written law" and that government policies, decisions, and offices all work towards the realisation of ‘’… (those goals) … // This was new to me and it helps to understanding how he was motivated. Danke!
Re the Japanese there was some collaboration with the Germans there was a few tanks sent over and planes and their technology on jet/rocket planes development was shared. Leading to Japanese versions of German fighters
While interesting he plays down the small ecomomies of the axis powers which meant they simply could not produce enough material to fight the allies which mean they could not have won outside of weak governments looking to appease.
This guy doesn't know what he is talking about. He's just trying to find a way to blame Hitler personally for losing WWII. He acts like if Germany kept bombing the runways they would have won the Battle of Britain. Which is absurd. None of his critiques of Hitler would have changed the outcome of the war.
There seems to be quite a lot of what I'd consider outdated historiography here. Japan would have never helped Germany out. They weren't really allies in a true sense of the word, they simply had some mutual interests, but after the bloody nose Japan received at Khalkhin Gol they were extremely reluctant to rattle the Soviet Union. This was to the point that in 1945 a large reason why they held off on surrendering was because they were hoping to have Moscow mediate peace talks between them and the United States, a prospect that utterly failed when the USSR invaded Manchuria. The fall of Moscow would have meant nothing for the Soviet war effort either, for whom the war was existential, and that in itself was a dubious possibility at best considering that Army Group Centre was at a brink of total collapse after the counteroffensives following the Battle of Moscow. It's actually incredible how close Centre came to folding entirely, Moscow was their last true shot at anything for that campaign season. The Battle of Britain could also not have been won by the Nazis, and even had the RAF been damaged more than it was, Sealion would still be a nonstarter because the Royal Navy would have had a say in the matter and neither the Kriegsmarine nor the Luftwaffe would have a great chance against that force within the English Channel. Hitler's role is also, in my view, overstated. There were plenty of times in which Hitler listened to his generals and they were the ones who made mistakes. A lot of Hitler's tyranny was written about post-war by German generals who were trying to exonerate themselves, but especially prior to the attempt on his life in July 1944, Hitler was quite happy to listen to his generals, even in cases where he was correct and they were not. Hitler was famously very against Operation Citadel, saying that it made his "stomach turn over." Hitler did a lot of reshuffling, even moreso towards the end of the war, but by that point the war was already lost anyway and in many cases Hitler understood the overall strategic situation better than his commanders did. Let's not take their word at face value here - they were Nazi sympathisers or outright Nazis themselves, not exactly the most trustworthy bunch. Lastly, in this presentation there seems to be a distinct lack of United States. The US alone had the resources to outproduce Nazi Germany at a terrifying rate. Any discussion of any possibility of German victory in the war would have to be balanced out by the simple fact that the US could provide Lend Lease to all of her allies whilst also fully equipping her army with state-of-the-art equipment that could easily rival the best of German kit. No wunderwaffe could match the sheer production of the United States alone, and with USSR in the mix the numbers were simply impossible, especially with the artisan style of production Germany used prior to Speer's simplifying of the war economy in 1943 - far too late. Ultimately Nazi Germany couldn't have won the war. At best they could have hoped to murder a few tens of millions more innocent people, but there was never a chance that they would have won the war. Ideology was an extremely important part of this, and I agree that Hitler was extremely ideologically-driven, but Germany was also completely out-generalled and outproduced. They were defeated by smarter commanders, better strategy, and better equipment.
I agree with you. His approach seems to me to be almost frivolous. His point is their strategic decisions were wrong because were always based on ideological premises. That is a very superficial analysis. Ideology (a very pernicious one) played an important part but geopolitics, economy, sustainability of the war effort, the Soviet and American mobilization to a war economy, etc, (and Hitler was well aware of all that) all played an equal important part in the strategic decision making.
I agree that Germany could never have won the war once the US joined the Allies but that's precisely what Dr Roberts says: one of the foolish decision of Hitler's was to declare war to the US in December 41.
I agree that Germany could never have won the war once the US joined the Allies but that's precisely what Dr Roberts says: one of the foolish decision of Hitler's was to declare war to the US in December 41.
And why are you not lecturing at the US War College? 😮 After all, your “brilliant” and “Grand Strategy-focused” historiography is so ‘spot-on’ and ‘rich’ in evidential documentation, from the tactical and operational to the psychological and diplomatic! I try and try to locate your sources, particularly your own works on Amazon!!! 😢 In point of fact, I can’t help but hear De Gaulle in June of ‘40, Dowding in August of ‘40, Zukov in September of ‘41, Churchill in May of ‘42, etc. screaming: “GET ME ‘MRKapcer13!!!’ The name of your book again, please?? 😊 Ahh …… TH-cam 😂
@@michaelcoatney2568 Well said! TH-cam historians taking on people who have studied and published decades, always fun to read through the comment sections.
In fact, Hitler stated in a lunch meeting with the Finnish Field Marshal von Mannerheim that while if he had been aware of the vast armour resources of the Red Army he might have had second thoughts about Operation Barbarossa, however through diplomatic channels it was learned that the Red Army was preparing to attack the Third Reich later in the summer of 1941, therefore he had to beat them to the punch and he did--he caught the Soviets unprepared. However what has been presented here is otherwise correct; he should have prepared his troops for winter and he should have kept pushing his way into Moscow.
Stalin was never seriously considering attacking Germany. It would be insane. Which is why Barbarossa took him by so such surprise because of how insane that invasion was with two countries with a a non aggression pact and also supplied Germany with oil and raw materials.
Well, hopefully it is balanced sensibly, unlike Hitler who followed it doggedly when it did not comport with reality. But then the Soviets eventually did the same thing.
When he was talking about how Hitler would promote his soldiers based on ideology rather than being a good soldier. I was thinking to myself "I'm sure glad that kind of thing isn't happening today".
I've heard there was a German tank commander (I think) who said something like "1 German tank was worth 4 US tanks. The problem was they always sent 5." Pretty amazing how much power Germany and Japan were separately able to muster in a fairly short amount of time.
@Craig Johnson Has anyone ever suggested that you may have seriously flawed ideas? Frankly, that's the impression I get from the statements you've posted. Being a classical liberal, I won't "report" your post but I suspect that most people would consider it.
@Craig Johnson you linked a vid with one woman who has multiple mental disorders who just says that her Jewish family was worshipping the devil as proof of your claims. This claim comes from a Christian point of view as jewish culture doesn't see the devil as an absolute force of evil but as a representation of temptations preventing you from submitting to gods will which is a weird thing to say you worship if you really come from a Jewish background. What part of your argument were you trying to reinforce with it?
No. Not at all.I do know the Americans got around 112 German scientists that were working on rocket technology.Werner Von Braun was one of them.He decided to surrender to the Americans,his brother spoke English and helped him.Where you get that the "Americans only kidnapped 1 Germany" is beyond me
He knew there was no way to invade England. For these simple reasons: 1) he didnt have air supremacy 2) the German navy was vastly outnumbered and out gunned by the British 3) not enough landing craft 4) no enough resources to supply the troops
@@Speedymisha All are true except 4. What resources was he lacking in the time periods in which Operation Sealion wouldn've taken place? At that point in the war he had oil reserves and all the supplies he required for a huge land war in Britain. A land war in Britain would've required much less time and resources than the Eastern front required.
@@adamanderson3042 Well said. Plus... if we're honest here... Britain had the world's best navy (japan and usa were up and coming but britain was still #1 prewar), they had a decent airforce (RAF)... thats it. Their army was small and depleted, relying mostly on its colonies for manpower. The problem was air and naval superiority the axis did not have... If it weren't for that, Britain itself would have probably been invaded easier than France..
Hitler never wanted to go to war with Britain. He didn't even expect them to go to war over Poland. And the Soviets were VERY close to being defeated. the ukrainians HATED the Russians and the soviet government. He could have conscripted them. Had he not been tied in the west, Soviets would have been toast.
Because no Country on earth could go to war against the US, UK and USSR all at once and hope to win. Basically Germany was fighting 6 other Germanys when you factor Manpower, resources and manufacturing capacity. The US alone had twice Germany's population , 5 times their resources and 4x their manufacturing capacity.
@Hugo Pointillart It's a known fact that Roosevelt wanted to get involved in the war with Russia and England scampering in the face of the German onslaught till late 1942 and 1943 he saw that as a chance to assert his supremacy by playing a big role in the war but Congress and the American public didn't find any reason to involve themselves in the war in the first place..Pearl Harbour attacks presented a great opportunity for the Govt and Roosevelt to gain support from American public and resources from the Congress for arms, ammunition in order not just help the Allies win the war but show them as the biggest contributors to its success thus giving the United States an opportunity to show the world their stature and clout, which was in the time to come was challenged by USSR which was then came to be known as the Cold War.
@Hugo Pointillart Actually, the fight in the East might well have gone for Germany if Germany did not have to tie down vast resources in the West -- 100 divisions in occupation, hundreds of submarines, much of the strength of the Luftwaffe -- and if the US and UK had not shipped vast supplies to the USSR. I always laugh when I hear Brits complaining about the US being late in rescuing the UK from a fight that it got itself into but then found it could not win without US help. When did the UK become a nation of ungrateful whiners?
Hitler to Mannerheim; "If one of my generals had stated that any nation had 35,000 tanks, I'd have said: 'You, my good sir, you see everything twice or ten times.You are crazy, you are seeing ghosts.'". Hitler underestimated the USSR and their winters. The window of opportunity for the Nazis to defeat the USSR was very narrow.
No, he had no window at all. Our goverment at the time was too stable and could have absorbed even more loses in manpower and territory. It is most likely that Stalin would go on fighting even if Nazis were marching past Urals mountains. Which is hard to imagine since infrasrucure there is just horrificly bad and distances are too big. Same story with Napoleon. Nicolas II goverment however was another story all together.
Great talk, and I agreed with all Dr Roberts' points. However, one important element was missing. Germany had no oil. It struggled by making substitutes from its coal reserves but this was never enough or of sufficient quality. The invasion of USSR was as much to do with getting hold of the oil fields in the south as anything else. It's also the reason Hitler did not want war with Britain. While our army and air force was lacking investment our so-called senior service was big enough to blockade Germany and prevent oil imports. Lack of fuel severely impeded the Nazi effort throughout the war and is one of the reasons they lost.
Interesting point, There were squads of German Luftwaffe personnel visiting Allied aircraft crash sites solely for the purpose of recovering aviation fuel and oil for use in their own fighters.
I think you are overlooking the Germans ability to get oil from Romania. Yes the 1942 campaign was toward the Caucasus oil fields but the initial invasion had other objectives.
@@pauloneil8531 No - they were chronically short of fuel throughout the war. This hampered their ability to mechamise their logistics and greatly reduced the impact of the Luftwaffe and Panzer divisions.
As I said Paul, I accept all Dr Roberts' points including Nazi aspirations to wipe out the USSR's Jews, to wipe out communism and create desirable living space for the 'master race'. But unlike his generals, Hitler wanted to prioritise the push to the Caucasus and warned them that if they failed to reach their goal they would run out of fuel. Romanian oil was only a small part of the solution. They needed Baku and its adjacent regions. But it was so far south the Nazis' eastern flank was hopelessly exposed and the supply lines overstretched.
@@Vedioviswritingservice "Afghanistan could!!!! :)" How would you know since Afghanistan has never been at war with those three countries at the same time. Plus, Afghanistan as the country and government was defeated in like one week if that. If your definition of 'beating' somebody is that once you are militarily and institutionally defeated and replaced, you still have pockets of armed guerrilla fighters continuing to resist, then shit, France and Poland both beat Germany long before the USSR, USA and UK.
His generals weren't always right. There are times they told him something couldn't be done only for him to do it. Hitler was actually more competent than most people give him credit for. He more or so began to fall apart the older that he got.
Hitler was a politician, not a military strategist. As the presenter says over and over, he made military decisions using political ideology as his primary set of principles. Of course, this would never happen in the United States...I mean, no President would EVER interfere with military commanders in the field for political reasons *COUGH* LBJ *COUGH*
Call him whatever you want to but do not forget what brutal harm he did to so many innocent people; Don't forget that all his right-hand cronies, ~all turned to the allies for a way out after all their immortal actions; They cried and begged and killed themselves and their own kids; Don't forget,,, If killing off entire specific races of people AND then thinking you are gonna breed your own super race does not make you the #1 psychopathic of all time, what does? What is madness then?
A real charmer Told his people we are a great people.The master race Look at all our advances in Sciences All those Noble prizes we won Told them We Germans don't deserve to suffer like this
Russian winter got Hitler,his weapons froze.Stalin had spies in Siberia worried about a Japanese attack that never came These troops were trained for winter fighting Had Hitler gotten to Stalingrad during better weather conditions, he would have gotten all the oil he needed, and he would have fought to last NAZI
Didn't Germany have the entire British Army cornered and could have annihilated them all at Dunkirk, but instead allowed them to live and escape?... If they didn't do that maybe things would have happened differently.
I haven't really seen this explanation proposed, but I think it bears consideration. Hitler had a lot of respect for the British soldiers from his WWI experiences. 300,000 British troops with their backs to the Channel would not have been a walkover. The Germans still had to face considerable French forces reorganizing to the south. Every German casualty and every lost tank would be one less to finish mopping up the French. Hitler may not have considered the losses of an assault worth the gains. After all, British troops withdrawn to Britain, largely without their equipment, were effectively out of the battle for France.
This is a bit of myth. The germans were still bombing the hell out of them at Dunkirk. They stopped because they had outrun their supply lines and needed to rearm. In my opinion Hitler didn't just let them go but was waiting for his supply lines and would have captured them if he could.
@@samlusby4576 I am more inclined to agree with this point of view. Another thing that adds credence to an Operational pause to regroup, refit and rearm is that no one, including the Royal Navy, thought that Britain could pull over 400,000 troops out of a town with no working port facilities. Prior to the Operation the RN thought it might be able to pull between 40 and 80,000 men off the mole. Given this, it is probably likely that no one really thought most of those trapped troops would be going anywhere, so its likely that Hitler believed his forces would have the time to rearm, re-equip, and move in to mop that pocket up when his forces were back up to close to full strength and capability.
Because dictators always think they know everything and overrule the better advice of others who obviously know better. The narcisstic psychology that propelled these individuals into power thus becomes their own undoing. I'm glad they lost, otherwise many of us would not be here.
Hitler famously spurned the advice of his generals, intelligence services and scientists - confident he knew more than all of them. Remind you of anyone?
Why Hitler Lost the War - Actual version: You can't win a war on two world powers which can beat you in production, logistics, manpower, and energy/oil production at the same time.
@jomax clux Even in the great depression the US was way more economically productive than Germany. What you people need to realise is that the USA has like 4-6 times more people and like 13 times more natural resources and farmland than Germany. It's not because Germany's economy was shit or bad, Germany was handicapped in the exact same way as if the current USA went to war with 4 identical clone USA's. There is strength and power in higher numbers.
@jomax clux I don't know. It depends on your viewpoint. But for social programs I don't think that was true. I think that the US and Europe had identical safety nets until the end of WW2 when Europe increased them and started to create single payer systems.
facts, this guy thinks that analyzing specific examples of german blunders would change the fact that they were outproduced, outmanned, and outgunned. They simply could not have won a total victory against the allies.
@@ethanstewart3292 It is hard to argue, whether Germany "could have won WW2", since there was no one thing that brought defeat. Rather it was a series of bad decisions. Was there a chance if the Nazis had limited the war to Europe? would coordination with Japan had significant impact? Was Hitler a lizard? Well maybe, but it is hard to say.
@jomax clux WWII as we define it in the West started in 1939. USA did not enter until 1941. The Great Depression was catalyzed by the 1929 stock market crash, and was extended by a series of bad government decisions for almost ten years. The US was well on the way to an economic into a recovery before 1939, and the US population had been significantly higher than England and Germany's for decades before that. Had US not entered the war, Russia would still have wiped out Germany almost by themselves, but it would have cost then another ten million casualties, and taken an additional two years.
Werner Heisenberg was in charge of creation of german atomic bomb. When asked after the war why he failed to create one he said he did it purposefully as he did not wanted the nazi to have a nuclear bomb.
The orator does have some valid points but he is mostly off on a lot of them. Hitler was an ideologue but not all of his motivations came from ideology. For example, his view that Hitler invaded the Soviet Union purely on racism and anti-semitism. Germany came out of the Weimar Republic without much oil and had to produce synthetic oil from coal which is an expensive process. Oil is one of the vital resources that is needed to maintain a mechanized military and for economic consumption for the economy in general. Hitler was an international economic expropriator and looter foremost when it came to military strategy. His world view isn't just that of racism but also cultures/nations struggle between other cultures/nations for the world's natural resources which is one of the bases of fascist autarky. The British had imposed a blockade on Germany which forced the state to pursue other sources of oil and that happens to be the Caucasus. Outside of the Caucasus and Russia, the only source of oil was Romania but that wasn't enough. The blockade would block imports by sea. Hitler wanted to control the oil fields of the region to switch his focus back at Britain. Germany did not have sufficient transport of materials and equipment. Their standard leFH 18 10.5cm howitzers were towed by horses and they didn't have enough heavy howitzers. That makes logical sense because a tank without fuel and oil is useless while a towed howitzer that is light enough can at least be moved by horses. Horses are not preferred for moving things around obviously because they are too slow. Hitler prioritized resources over tactics than his top generals. Hitler was no economic genius but he did have financial ministers/advisors, etc, so he had some grasp on the state of the economy of the nation and the military. He could either cease militarism or he could try to take over more resources to maintain an army. This is a very similar situation to the Saddam Hussien invading Kuwait in the 1990s. You have belligerent states who want a military but can't afford it, so in order to maintain it, they need to invest more wars to try to acquire more resources to sustain it for immediate satisfaction. The reason why Germany lost Operation Barbarossa was the focus on major cities such as Moscow which was not a good idea for a "quick war" because Blitzkrieg or tank tactics for that matter are not that effective in urban combat. Urban combat suits the defenders the most especially if they are more familiar with the environment. Cities were not major sources of resources, in fact, stuff like oil was imported from other regions into such cities such as the Volga River feeding Stalingrad from the South. By pursuing urban combat, the Germans opened themselves to setbacks such as "the grain elevator fight" in Stalingrad. Things like tank fire, light artillery fire, could not get the Russian defenders out of there. They would be in a drawn-out battle and allow the Soviets time to counter-attack while the Germans were in the least advantageous position basically nullifying the shock to the enemy. The Germans never surveyed the urban environment either which is not a good idea when fighting in unfamiliar territory. Even still, successfully capturing Moscow wouldn't guarantee Soviet surrender and it would be costly to do so. The German command thought of the France victory and had no grasp of the ferocity the Soviets had to defend their land. German generals also failed to realize how much of a disadvantage urban combat would be in a crunch. About Japan-Germany cooperation, the orator is correct. There wasn't much cooperation between the two and because of that, the US got into the war which was disastrous for the Axis because, at the time, the US was the greatest producer of oil by far. The US did not use horses for their towed artillery, they didn't need to. They used mechanized primary movers instead. The US could power a fleet of ships without much problems or a war effort.
i mean the invasion of the USSR was mostly due to ideology. Ever heard of Generalplan Ost? Do you know what Hitler thought of the Slavs, or what he wanted done to them?
I enthusiastically concur! Just like Daesh at war with all miscreants, i.e., every human being, Muslim or whatever, who ain't a freak of their own sick sect... Or like the narcissistic Orange Buffoon, enabled by the decadent GOP party & empowered by voting Deplorables, at war with China on his own, befriending mortal enemies, thrashing allied economies, weakening fellow Western democracies. The good Dow Jones news won't last, the mortal debt and accented inequalities will before long badly bite Uncle Sam on the arse... The fat egomaniac will fall eventually and assuredly hurt many folks still wise, brave and free.
@Alien Alien I remember a day 42 years ago when I noticed a book of German propaganda that was on the shelves of a library in California. It showed a group of dead people in German uniforms. Now, I knew at the time that they were actually murdered Jews that the Nazis had dressed in German army uniforms to make propaganda that Poland had attacked Germany first. The book was in English. I brought it to the attention of the librarian that there was some wretched Nazi propaganda on the shelves. I knew that it was unlikely that there was someone so stupid as to believe it (after all, it was 1977 and people knew about Hitler, the Nazis, and the war), but it still angered me. Are you really so stupid as to believe Nazi propaganda in 2019? I somewhat doubt that you do, so I suspect that you must be a troll.
An old german soilder once told me "Always be sure to polish the backs of your shoes because thats the last thing people see of you as your walking away" Old Hugo Hopfliecsh might have been on the wrong side in 43, but he was sharp as a tack.
@@rogerpattube Takes more than resources, when talking about Naval Buildup you also have to take into account the production facilities themselves. Fact is prior to the war Germany simply did not have the slipways required to build subs in such high numbers. Granted they buit more slipways during the war, and you do not need the kind of facilities to build submarines that are required to build Battleships, but the fact still remains that you *do* need those slipways, you do need those drydocks, and Germany simply did not have the Naval building capacity at the time to come anywhere near close to building that number of U-Boats prior to the war. Pretty much the only two nations that DID have that kind of Naval production capacity were Britain and the US.
Excellent, concise reasoning. Dr. Roberts has a talent for distilling a vast amount of facts to a sharp and coherent argument of general truths rather than mere generalizations.
Kevin McCaffrey Agree, west side war was just a invasion to prevent ussr taking Germany and station US permanently in Europe . Beside fighting Wehrmacht , committed horrible civilian genocide of German civilians and permanently occupied Germany to our days. Contribution to wining the war was just negligible compared to use who won the war already. We US, entered European theatre one year before the end of the war.... DrRonerts is in the service of rewriting history. Mainly nonsense.
Hardly surprising that an upper class Brit "historian" neglects to mention that Kim Philby was feeding Ultra decryptions to Stalin, who on occasion read them even before Churchill did. This was a decisive factor at Kursk, and thereafter informed the Soviet strategy during the German retreat, speeding up the Soviet advance considerably.
The Nazi party did not just include Hitler. He talks about this as all being the plot and ideology of one man. For instance, when talking about Ukraine, the harsh occupation plans were embedded not only in the ideology of the party, but also in the army. There is one crucial thing that Roberts does not include in criticizing this aspect: The Wehrmacht relied on the territory it occupied. There had been made no plans to provide sufficient rations and supplies to the army. In fact, the logistics were virtually ignored given that they believed the war to be over before Christmas. The plan was to simply take what they needed from the locals. It was this use of forced labour and food confiscation that turned the locals against the occupiers. The Nazi party and the army had decided to avoid the situation that they thought made them lose WW1: unrest at home. They wanted to maintain a comfortable life for the German civilian population. This necessitated a harsh occupation policy.
What the hell were they doing asking a renowned historian like this to deliver this lecture, when they should have asked several thousand self appointed TH-cam experts to lecture them instead? Fools!
Exactly, I was waiting to be called to give this lecture, I have 4 years of TH-cam experience, which more than qualifies me.
Well, a lot of these TH-cam warriors are busy killing Osama Bin Laden with their keyboards.
Actually, I was wondering why they even bother teaching History at colleges any more. With TH-cam and a couple hours, I can become an expert on anything!
Looks like TH-cam experts 10,000 renowned historian 0 a massive scoreline in our favour therefore no contest.
They should have hired me and not the other guys, I'm well seasoned with Reddit AND TH-cam.
"our german scientists were cleverer than their german scientists", that one was was savage.
As plagiarised by the screenwriters of the Right Stuff I recall.
And then the Americans took those German scientists
@@petemommo9622I was trying to remember if it was The Right Stuff or Dr. Strangelove. Classic line either way and completely true. The Germans not only had the brain trust to build The Bomb long before we did but it was never prioritized. In the movie Oppenheimer it's cast as Nazi anti-Semitism being the accidental savior and reason they didn't get the bomb; the truth was that Heisenberg wasn't given the mandate or resources to do it. Whether that was ideological or the German command staff thought they didn't need such a weapon isn't certain, but when US spy (and major league catcher) Moe Berg attended a lecture and talked with Heisenberg in Zurich in 1943 (with orders to shoot and kill Heisenberg on the spot if Berg concluded the Germans were getting close to having a bomb) the conclusion was that not only were they not close but there wasn't even a coherent program to make one anytime soon. Nevertheless, it's so scary to think about how a small handful of decisions could have swayed the outcome of WW2 and how different the world would be today had that happened.
@@cmikeinkc6905It’s unfortunate how things turned out.
@@cmikeinkc6905yea because the state of Europe and US isn’t “scary” at the moment🤦🏻♂️
TH-cam: Here's a lecture about Germany and WWII
Me: okay I'll watch it all
As Napoleon Bonaparte said. Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.
The Great Patriotic War (WW2). 27 million Soviet people died in the fight against Hitler's Nazism.
Well, yes, but I would still hint a Hitler that Holocaust is a mistake.
@@rozachernushchernush5549War they started with their former ally. That doesn’t make Soviets good guys.
@@otofoto If it were not for the strength of 27 million Soviet guys, Hitler's Nazism would have burned many more people in the furnaces of concentration camps than 6 million Jews and 9 million Soviet citizens. But this cannot be explained to a Nazi.
@@rozachernushchernush5549 slava ukraini
Well, i am not an expert. But i guess fighting basicly all other Industrial nations at the Same time might have been a strategic mistake...
And trying to do this with a dysfunctional centrally planned economy was a huge mistake to go with it.
Albert Speer worked "miracles" in increasing production. Not as "miraculous" as the immense productivity of American industry, but some tremendous increases in output? What was this "miracle"? He dismantled restrictions placed by the Nazi bureaucracy that were holding everything back.
Well, needing war materials shipped in from overseas and getting into a war with the largest naval power in the world kind of compounds that.
It is fair to point to the types and organization of armor in the British and French armies (mostly organization and use) and the difficulties in fighting the Germans after they achieved a breakthrough (dealing with German mobile warfare tactics), and say the British and French were not prepared for the war they were going to have to fight.
But it is also fair to point out that Germany wasn't prepared for a war with Britain, having no reasonable means of knocking Britain out of the war. The naval blockade bled Germany. They needed more oil than Romania could provide, but the blockade prevented import from Venezuela (with over 4 times the oil output of Romania).
Germany could have beaten USSR, if not for this blockade and the need to keep large forces in France and Norway, and the massive losses to the Luftwaffe from the Battle of Britain. A thorn in Germany's side.
The Germans were forced into war, not the other way around
@@iansneddon2956 There's a billion nuanced details that guaranteed a Nazi defeat to the British empire, but people only look at the battle of Britain and sort of imagine Britain as this helpless damsel in distress
Hitler had no choice. They'd already occupied most of Eastern Europe and initiated a trade embargo. And newly created, at the Treaty of Versailles, Poland, was raping and slaughtering Germans in the Danzig corridor...50,000 Germans. He was surrounded from all sides and cut off. And the Bolsheviks, having arranged the largest military buildup in history all ain't the Eastern European border, were coming.
Any attempt to say it was Hitler's mistakes that caused their eventual defeat is short sighted and stupid, where the ENTIRE world was arrayed against her, as funded by those terrible enemies of European Christianity.
5:30 Classic Sun Tzu: "when you're strong, appear weak; when you're weak, appear strong.
Thanks. That’s almost as useful as a mathematics textbook that only tells you to “count carefully.”😂 sometimes your advice is so vague and broad that you might as well have said nothing at all.
It appears China doesn't subscribe to classic Sun Tzu in this regard.
@@CTS.CriticalThinkingSkills they are weak and appear strong, sounds like Sun Tzu to me
@@scerpalman LOL, they appear "wannabe strong," which isn't appearing strong. It's"fake strength." Their ability to create fakes by copying others' technology & doctrine is world renowned...as crappy copies.
Sun tzu’s manual was only applicable for his time period. Does modern military use doctrines from the 1700s? His manual today is only useful for morons to quote to make themself seem more intelligent than they actually are. So tired of all this sun tzu garbage. You have zero life lessons to learn from a military manual from any time period.
What a brilliant lecture and so beautifully delivered. I hope England never stops producing men like these.
mental note: National Executive should always listen to strategic generals.
Something Sun Tzu told everybody who would listen.
I’d be wary to trust this speech. The presenter talks about strategy but doesn’t even mention the letter from the German armaments minister to Hitler in 1941 which said in no uncertain terms that Germany had six months of fuel reserves left and then they would be forced to DEMOBOLIZE. The invasion of Russia was a strategic move to drive for the oil in the caucuses but the generals wanted to capture Moscow and fought Hitler which resulted in a drive North instead of concentrating South on the oil fields. Ideology played a part but it was mostly propaganda to fuel the fire, not the underlying cause of the decision to invade. That this wasn’t even mentioned makes me very concerned because there is no way this historian hasn’t seen these primary sources. Besides, everyone knows the “we lost the war because of Hitler’s meddling” story was invented by surviving generals post-war in their memories to make themselves look better.
Was Patton a strategic general?
The Great Patriotic War (WW2). 27 million Soviet people died in the fight against Hitler's Nazism.
@@furrycow9263 Good point...American generals did not look so good on the actual battlefield imo.
21:07 The ignorance of cold and its drastic effects on people's health, while pretending to be able to tough it out, is one of the most teaching elements. It seems such a benign boasting, which many people still do today, yet it shows how being realistic can also mean looking "weak" in the eyes of delusional people.
That's why Patton's pivoting to Bastogne to "save" the 101st Screamin' Eagles was so impressive ..
Bitter cold and snow.....
@@Kendrix1they didn’t need saving
The Great Patriotic War (WW2). 27 million Soviet people died in the fight against Hitler's Nazism.
i might get side-eyed for this one but i can’t think of a better example of unhealthy patriarchal bs hurting men. “real men can survive subzero war conditions in shorts” could be a south park bit, it staggers me how many men have had to suffer on this planet for being held to such inhuman standards masquerading as strength
@@rozachernushchernush5549Russian losers got their asses kicked and got bailed out by America
What a great lecture, so well delivered too, thank you! Absolutely brilliant.
Recycling wartime propaganda is brilliant? If you want brilliant go read some of David Irving's work.
Guderian visited the Soviet Union in 1938 and wrote a report to higher staffs in the Wehrmacht, warning about the much better than anticipated tank force they had. It was ignored. That is what politics do to military leadership. You can observe this in the US nowadays and elsewhere too, I guess 😂😂
That's not the whole story. Soviets were able to concentrate on tanks as their fighters, trucks and I think locomotives were supplied by the US, and German morale on the front was being sapped by constant news of the homeland being bombed, which also cut German production. Take away lend-lease, or take away the bombing campaign, and the Germans wouldn't have been turned at Kursk, would have taken Baku's oil, have hung on in Stalingrad and advanced into Moscow. Guderian couldn't have foreseen lend-lease nor the Eighth Air Force so arguably his conclusions were correct.
@@lqr824 I am not touching other factors, playing out in later war years. I just hint an ignored fact by Hitler and today's pseudo-hindsight war ananlytics. You don't have to praise your US lend and lease psyops in me as well...Your Eight Air force did not turn the war 20 km in front of Moscow. Get off Discovery Channel 😂
Headphone users beware, stop the video 5 seconds before the end.
Okay I'm going directly to the last 5 seconds and see what's up.
The Great Patriotic War (WW2). 27 million Soviet people died in the fight against Hitler's Nazism.
I was on a run while listening to this and the adrenaline from my eardrums being blasted to shreds made me run 2 miles further than I had anticipated lol
@@rozachernushchernush5549 slava ukraini
Naaaaah... The Ukrainians didn't kill 27mil Russians. Germany did. Hence: Ruhm für Deutschland
Having one's eyelids frozen off must bring insanity.
What a gem 💎
Outstanding educational!
Worth bringing it back!
Thanks for sharing!
When Germany broke its pact with Stalin and invaded the USSR, Stalin feared doom for his regime if Japan, which already occupied China, invaded the Soviet Far East. Fortunately for Stalin, the Soviet dictator had a highly effective nest of spies among the Japanese: Richard Sorge, a German; Hotsumi Ozaki, a Japanese journalist; and Kinkazu Saionji, a Japanese political operative. As M. Stanton Evans details in _Blacklisted By History_, this circle of Soviet spies succeeded (or assisted) in persuading the Japanese government to strike south into Southeast Asia, rather than north into the Soviet Far East. Meanwhile Soviet spies in the US such as Lauchlan Currie lobbied FDR to seek an accommodation with Tokyo. This all took place in 1941. We will never know how differently events would have turned out if Germany and Japan had joined forces to crush the USSR in a pincer movement, Western forces were not drawn into East Asia to defend against Japan, and the US had stayed out of the Pacific war because Pearl Harbor never happened.
I've heard it said that at various points during WW2, Allied forces had the ability to take Hitler out using either sneak attacks or some clandestine operation, but it was far enough into the overt conflict that the Allied powers realized that Hitler was such a colossally bad strategist, and tied up in ideological foolishness and internal power disputes, that it ironically made more sense to keep him in charge, because if he'd been taken out, almost ANYONE who'd have replaced him would've done a much better job and potentially cost the Allies the war.
Idk. There has to be more to the story that we’re not told. Like was it dresden or some city of civilians that was totally destroyed by the allied powers but didn’t need to be. There were lots of war crimes committed by the west. French raped as many people as the soviets. I did read there’s a secret cemetery that holds a hundred Americans convicted and killed for war crimes in Europe.
Maybe hitler was a bad at strategy, but like then ya got operation paper clip and the U.S. taking back thousands of war criminals etc and some nazis later in life working in nato. Canada gave an applause to a nazi this past year cause he fought Russia haha.
Then ya got ties from people in the federal reserve that had relatives in the central bank of Germany. It’s like that smells fishy.
@@koltoncrane3099 There was really no reason to bring whataboutism into this thread.
Hitler sucked at strategy, that's all that really needs to be said.
@@LabTech41 Your hatred for what you know not, blinds you.
@@koltoncrane3099 Was this guy a confirmed Nazi or was he just an average German soldier? Some people use Nazis for any standard German, not realizing that tons of Germans fought in the war that where not Nazis nor did they believe in them.
@@LabTech41oh you're so right! I'm so fed up with "whataboutism"!!!
Excellent talk and delivered with an absolute minimum of notes . The point about ideology trumping sound military strategy is well made and entirely plausible.
What a fantastic lecture. Liked that the lecturer himself was a touch nervous, he must've known the caliber of his audience then & they must've been some learned people. GREAT WORK TEACH!
Recycled British wartime propaganda is not fantastic. He does make his lecture interesting by it's delivery, but content wise it falls a bit flat. He did have some factual points like the Nazis not understanding America and that Hitler clung too tightly to ideology at the expense of sensible strategy. Also he had some other good point but here was working to continue to make sure the view of the British establishment remained the dominant view.
@@user-qj6vg8gp3l What's the title of your book?
I ve lived in a cold part of Canada all my life. Just as cold as Russia.
But I’ve never heard of case of someone’s eyelids falling off due to frostbite or cold.
Ears and nose , toes and fingers freeze, but not eyelids…
Just doesn’t happen.
This makes me question all his other opinions and observations.
He was quoting someone else’s contemporary account. I’m guessing he wasn’t around then.
Brilliant. Will have to get the book.
It's an excellent book, on many levels.
A stunning read
Hi guys, what’s the name of the book? Thanks.
@@edirinokpikpi9039 The Storm Of War
Excellent video
Not listening to generals was never a reason why Hitler lost the war. His generals said tanks won't be able to penetrate France's forests, yet he didn't listen to them and attacked, taking out France. Loyalty was also a good thing, cause no matter how good the specialist is, if they're against you, you're doomed
Agree. Its an old and hashed out point they love to use to make him look dumb.
Always remember the parable of Achilles. It applies everywhere.
The story about how the Battle of Britain changed is mentiolned in the BBC-PBS series Battlefield. Great series. Watched almost all 30 episodes.
Interesting topic, thanks for the analysis! I would also say that Hitler bribed his Generals with lavish cash amounts and confiscated estates to get them to agree with him. Guderian wanted his confiscated Polish estate back after the war!
High on my (uninformed) list of missed opportunities was Hitler's failure to persuade Franco to attack or allow Germany to attack Gibraltar (from the land). Franco used the Luftwaffe to win the civil war and yet the terms or behaviour of both parties failed to form an agreement. The fall of Gibraltar would have changed the N.Africa campaign and the attack on Sicily.
If Spain were not "neutral", it would have opened up being attacked through both Italy and Spain. Spain was heavily weakened by the Civil War, and relied on the US for a lot of imports. An Axis Spain would have been a weakness.
Canaris helped keep Spain neutral.
On the surface it does seem like a missed opportunity, but looking into the events, there was little hope for the germans.
Spain was still effectively a pile of rubble incapable of waging war on the scale of the second world war, a fact franco knew all too well.
The person responsible for diplomacy with the Spanish was Wilhelm canaris, chief of the abwehr (german intelligence agency), who was very much against the war and nazism, so he would intentionally point out Germany's shortcomings and play up allied strength to franco to stop him from joining the axis, his work was instrumental in dashing any hopes of spanish participation.
Franco would use the insider information to demand extensive aid to spain for her to join the war, which hitler was unwilling to give.
These factors, combined with spanish, italian and french disputes in the Mediterranean and africa all cemented Spain's neutrality
It could have made an impact in the Mediterranean, but it very likely would not have affected Normandy, nor would it have affected the eastern front at all. The Germans needed to capture the Suez Canal to hurt allied commercial shipping, I don't think Spain would have gotten them to that strategic objective. Their lack of supplies is the biggest factor in the failure of North Africa, they also did not have the dominating manpower nor the resolve the British seemed to show in holding the canal. Like I said though, it doesn't change the eastern front in the slightest, which ultimately was the biggest threat. Germans needed better logistics which may have been possible if they had mechanized? But they flat out needed more oil and even steel, they quite simply could not manufacture equipment at a fast enough rate. Sabotage and aerial bombings wore their manufacturing down, until they ran out of fuel, equipment, territory to retreat, and men.
Franco wasn't silly enough to allow German forces into Spain.
How did Bruno Ganz not win the oscar?
Because it was a horrible portrait!
Bradley Coopers next picture has him playing Hitler, I assume he will win the oscar for it
What makes you say that? He must have studied the secret YLE recording. @@oldtimer7635
Because he portrayed Hitler.the academy would not like it.
@@number6Mclovin the academy is all jewish, itll never happen.
Shameless plug at 18:12 haha - wow I am totally enjoying this speaker. Thank you TH-cam
very good talk
fascinating
Hitler lost the war when he decided to attack the USSR. That opened up a two front war and his army couldn't do both.
80% of German casualties were on the eastern front
The last 5 seconds was Hitler's ghost, trying to get in the last word. 😂
All without notes !!!
In all fairness, in addition to ideology, the Red Army looked incompetent and weak in Finland. Also, it can be argued that it was a pre-emptive strike. How long could a Nazi Germany and USSR, two polarized police states, share a peaceful border? If Stalin had more time to build up and improve his own Red Army, would he not come knocking or making demands on Hitler? That fight was going to happen sooner or later.
I wish I had a better recollection of the aurhors TIK has cited and their biases.
he does put all his sources in the description so you can just look it up (if you remember the particular video)
I'm no longer a big TIK fan, but he's easily more educated on the eastern front than the guy giving this lecture
There are so many variables in play that it’s difficult to summarize.
If you had a supercomputer, you might begin to model a world war …. Maybe.
Looking back, some things are hard to believe. The US shipped Soldiers directly to war zones with no training. Congress eventually insisted that all Soldiers get some training.
DePuy, Gorman, and Kanner created the later training revolution, but they made IMO one large mistake. The TRADOC training base would train individual tasks and units would train collective tasks. LTG Bown later included the ten days of war as the ENDEX at the Armor Ctr.
Today DARPA created SIMNET which allows simulated large scale force-on-force training.while the NTC allows company level force on force training.
Getting back to WW2, a huge variable was logistics…. Germany faced huge problems supplying units across immense distances with poor infrastructure.
That's easy. He stopped attacking RAF airfields and started attacking English cities. Thus enabling RAF to grow stronger and win Battle of Britain which denied him German air cover over English Channel. So his boats were unable to cross the channel without being attacked by British aircraft.
The Royal Navy was still the most powerful fleet on the planet. They wouldn't have succeeded regardless.
Attacking the cities also pissed off the population something fierce.
I heard germany didnt have transports too
They had a Ford truck plant. Making trucks under licence@@MrFazerlogin
@@mauricehodgson3143 i mean water
To make a short story even shorter, your ego will sink your own ship, every time.
Not quite...
he never wanted war with Britain DID NOT have the resources to occupy Britain... he loved the British people and saw them as "Civilized and honorable people" he was genuinely shocked when they declared war on him because they did NOT benefit from it.
He even let them escape when their backs were to the sea at one point, he let them bomb his nation for weeks before he responded, the entire time he was suing for peace.
Rudolph Hess parachuted into Scotland to make peace, they arrested him for LIFE, then just before he was due for release at age 93, he was found strangled to death in his cell. . .
This is all documented. Watch Zoomer Historian here on YT for an unbiased look. A LOT of propaganda surrounds WWI and WWII.
@@aResoluteProtectorif he didn’t want war with britain then he shouldn’t have invaded Poland. Britain was guaranteeing poland against invasion. If Hitler thought that the British were “civilized and honorable” then he should’ve known that they would honor their word and go to war to defend Poland. If your theory is accurate then it makes Hitler incredibly stupid.
@@aResoluteProtectorhe didn’t let the troops at dunkirk escape
The French Belgians and panzers running out of fuel did
Not that it would matter as it was the Royal Navy and air force that won the war
@@johnny4221But they didn’t go to war to defend Poland. Britain and France declared war on Germany as a formality. They didn’t do anything to actually assist Poland. Hell, they never even bothered declaring war on the USSR when it invaded Poland two weeks after Germany.
Hitler’s goal was to reestablish German borders to pre-Versailles and reintegrate the German diaspora. He never wanted to conquer the world and he didn’t think Britain and the U.S. would be stupid enough to ally themselves with the Soviets.
The entire war was a farce. We went to war to “liberate Europe” and then had no problem with ending the war with the Soviets controlling half the continent.
@@kungfoochicken08 There was no saving Poland, the allies Britain and France knew this. But they also knew Germany wasn't going to stop at Poland. And there was no war against the USSR for them to join in the first place, the Soviets only went in after the Polish government fled the country and Polish troops had orders not to fire on the Soviets.
Europe was liberated from fascism, the goal of the war was achieved. That's not a farce. The allies never fought in any of the places the Soviets demanded control over at Yalta. The soviets did most of the work, lost way more than any of the other allies, and what they got control over was fair by comparison.
"Re-establishing Germany's pre-Versailles borders" meant taking Alsace Lorraine (which was only German territory since the Franco-Prussian war before then) from France, even if Britain ignored Poland they were always going to defend France. Thinking they'd sit idly by would be pure stupidity. And of course the allies would ally with the Soviets if the Soviets were attacked by Germany too. A common enemy makes a hell of a good reason for an alliance. There's no logic to what you're saying, you're just trying really hard to be charitable to Hitler for whatever reason despite there being simply no logical defence for his actions.
What's the title of his book?
The Storm Of War
Very cool.
Det er sjældent at man høre så mange myter fra 'en man.
It was Raader who didn't want to build a large uboat fleet. Same kind of thing happened US Navy in the 1980's.
Addiction
Hitler could have taken Moscow if Japan attacked Siberia. That would be the end. The soviets would have been demoralized. There’s no way they would continue fighting on after that right? Right??
So my big issue with this lecture is that while yes towards the end of the war he was making bad calls and essentially destroying the army we forget that at the start of the war his officers were making bad calls and he was over ruling them in some cases saving the german army take for example the battle of Moscow had they retreated the army would have been destroyed in the same kind of march that destroyed the grand army over 100 years ago but having them dig in gave them much needed shelter and a fighting chance against the red army divisions that were starting to bear down on them an example of when he didn't do this was before the battle of Kursk he was quoted as saying that thinking of the operation made him sick to his stomach and he felt like it would have been a blood bath and he was right I do feel like I must reiterate that this was early to mid war later on he was over ruling the wrong orders and making the bad calls that we're used to this lecture while full of good quotes and good history at times screams of the post war memoirs written by former generals who pinned all their failures and warcrimes on Mr. H or the officers who died
when i visit UK today and walk trough some citiy i got the feeling u guys lost too^^
Too right
We all did
Big time…
That has NOTHING to do with WW2. Migration in the UK only really started in the 1990s and 2000s as the population was aging and child birth slowing down and that just comes with better quality of life, Germany even if Hitler had won WW2 would also slow down as the economy advanced over time you see the same in Japan, in China, in France in Russia, all of the countries follow the same path, as the economy advances child birth goes down leading to a demand for migration to fill the missing shoes. Germany started early with migration from Turkey and UK later in the 1990s-2000s. What has happened after 2000 until today has nothing to do with WW2. Keep in mind that China and Japan do not allow migration and as a result their future population outlook is VERY VERY bad. Japan will lost 1/3 of population and China 1/2 by 2100. Germany if Hitler had won the war would be today a much smaller population without any migration.
@@drscopeify population slowing down comes with better quality of life? does that mean migration decreases quality of life?
To be a ruthless dictator is fine... as long as you can retain power!
Thank you, Professor. I just looked up the “Führer's Principle” that you mentioned early. Here it is for other Google scholars: The “Führerprinzip (German: [ˈfyːʀɐpʀɪnˌtsiːp], the leader principle) prescribed the fundamental basis of political authority in the Government of Nazi Germany, understood to mean that "the Führer's word is above all written law" and that government policies, decisions, and offices all work towards the realisation of ‘’… (those goals) … // This was new to me and it helps to understanding how he was motivated. Danke!
Re the Japanese there was some collaboration with the Germans there was a few tanks sent over and planes and their technology on jet/rocket planes development was shared. Leading to Japanese versions of German fighters
Great lecture, sir - thank you for sharing.
While interesting he plays down the small ecomomies of the axis powers which meant they simply could not produce enough material to fight the allies which mean they could not have won outside of weak governments looking to appease.
This guy doesn't know what he is talking about. He's just trying to find a way to blame Hitler personally for losing WWII. He acts like if Germany kept bombing the runways they would have won the Battle of Britain. Which is absurd. None of his critiques of Hitler would have changed the outcome of the war.
There seems to be quite a lot of what I'd consider outdated historiography here. Japan would have never helped Germany out. They weren't really allies in a true sense of the word, they simply had some mutual interests, but after the bloody nose Japan received at Khalkhin Gol they were extremely reluctant to rattle the Soviet Union. This was to the point that in 1945 a large reason why they held off on surrendering was because they were hoping to have Moscow mediate peace talks between them and the United States, a prospect that utterly failed when the USSR invaded Manchuria.
The fall of Moscow would have meant nothing for the Soviet war effort either, for whom the war was existential, and that in itself was a dubious possibility at best considering that Army Group Centre was at a brink of total collapse after the counteroffensives following the Battle of Moscow. It's actually incredible how close Centre came to folding entirely, Moscow was their last true shot at anything for that campaign season.
The Battle of Britain could also not have been won by the Nazis, and even had the RAF been damaged more than it was, Sealion would still be a nonstarter because the Royal Navy would have had a say in the matter and neither the Kriegsmarine nor the Luftwaffe would have a great chance against that force within the English Channel.
Hitler's role is also, in my view, overstated. There were plenty of times in which Hitler listened to his generals and they were the ones who made mistakes. A lot of Hitler's tyranny was written about post-war by German generals who were trying to exonerate themselves, but especially prior to the attempt on his life in July 1944, Hitler was quite happy to listen to his generals, even in cases where he was correct and they were not. Hitler was famously very against Operation Citadel, saying that it made his "stomach turn over." Hitler did a lot of reshuffling, even moreso towards the end of the war, but by that point the war was already lost anyway and in many cases Hitler understood the overall strategic situation better than his commanders did. Let's not take their word at face value here - they were Nazi sympathisers or outright Nazis themselves, not exactly the most trustworthy bunch.
Lastly, in this presentation there seems to be a distinct lack of United States. The US alone had the resources to outproduce Nazi Germany at a terrifying rate. Any discussion of any possibility of German victory in the war would have to be balanced out by the simple fact that the US could provide Lend Lease to all of her allies whilst also fully equipping her army with state-of-the-art equipment that could easily rival the best of German kit. No wunderwaffe could match the sheer production of the United States alone, and with USSR in the mix the numbers were simply impossible, especially with the artisan style of production Germany used prior to Speer's simplifying of the war economy in 1943 - far too late.
Ultimately Nazi Germany couldn't have won the war. At best they could have hoped to murder a few tens of millions more innocent people, but there was never a chance that they would have won the war. Ideology was an extremely important part of this, and I agree that Hitler was extremely ideologically-driven, but Germany was also completely out-generalled and outproduced. They were defeated by smarter commanders, better strategy, and better equipment.
I agree with you. His approach seems to me to be almost frivolous. His point is their strategic decisions were wrong because were always based on ideological premises. That is a very superficial analysis. Ideology (a very pernicious one) played an important part but geopolitics, economy, sustainability of the war effort, the Soviet and American mobilization to a war economy, etc, (and Hitler was well aware of all that) all played an equal important part in the strategic decision making.
I agree that Germany could never have won the war once the US joined the Allies but that's precisely what Dr Roberts says: one of the foolish decision of Hitler's was to declare war to the US in December 41.
I agree that Germany could never have won the war once the US joined the Allies but that's precisely what Dr Roberts says: one of the foolish decision of Hitler's was to declare war to the US in December 41.
And why are you not lecturing at the US War College? 😮 After all, your “brilliant” and “Grand Strategy-focused” historiography is so ‘spot-on’ and ‘rich’ in evidential documentation, from the tactical and operational to the psychological and diplomatic! I try and try to locate your sources, particularly your own works on Amazon!!! 😢 In point of fact, I can’t help but hear De Gaulle in June of ‘40, Dowding in August of ‘40, Zukov in September of ‘41, Churchill in May of ‘42, etc. screaming: “GET ME ‘MRKapcer13!!!’ The name of your book again, please?? 😊
Ahh …… TH-cam 😂
@@michaelcoatney2568 Well said! TH-cam historians taking on people who have studied and published decades, always fun to read through the comment sections.
In fact, Hitler stated in a lunch meeting with the Finnish Field Marshal von Mannerheim that while if he had been aware of the vast armour resources of the Red Army he might have had second thoughts about Operation Barbarossa, however through diplomatic channels it was learned that the Red Army was preparing to attack the Third Reich later in the summer of 1941, therefore he had to beat them to the punch and he did--he caught the Soviets unprepared. However what has been presented here is otherwise correct; he should have prepared his troops for winter and he should have kept pushing his way into Moscow.
Stalin was never seriously considering attacking Germany. It would be insane. Which is why Barbarossa took him by so such surprise because of how insane that invasion was with two countries with a a non aggression pact and also supplied Germany with oil and raw materials.
grande erudição...pena que não haja tradução para o português
This comment section proves that AH’s ideology is still very much alive today
Amen
Well, hopefully it is balanced sensibly, unlike Hitler who followed it doggedly when it did not comport with reality. But then the Soviets eventually did the same thing.
Should I be happy or sad?
Horrendous audio malfunction jumpscare at 36:16
When he was talking about how Hitler would promote his soldiers based on ideology rather than being a good soldier. I was thinking to myself "I'm sure glad that kind of thing isn't happening today".
Oh wait!
I've heard there was a German tank commander (I think) who said something like "1 German tank was worth 4 US tanks. The problem was they always sent 5."
Pretty amazing how much power Germany and Japan were separately able to muster in a fairly short amount of time.
@Phil McCrevice
Just the war in the pacific was not lead by tanks because they were utterly useless in jungle warfare.
@@derkernspalter also useless since it would be logistically stupid to ship tanks from one tiny island to another
The saying I’ve heard is that 1 German tank is worth 10 Allied ones, but they send 11.
@Craig Johnson Has anyone ever suggested that you may have seriously flawed ideas?
Frankly, that's the impression I get from the statements you've posted.
Being a classical liberal, I won't "report" your post but I suspect that most people would consider it.
@Craig Johnson you linked a vid with one woman who has multiple mental disorders who just says that her Jewish family was worshipping the devil as proof of your claims. This claim comes from a Christian point of view as jewish culture doesn't see the devil as an absolute force of evil but as a representation of temptations preventing you from submitting to gods will which is a weird thing to say you worship if you really come from a Jewish background. What part of your argument were you trying to reinforce with it?
"We won because our German scientists were cleverer than their German scientists."
LOL
starfox300 lolll you are right
Classic, the miracle of German engineering.
What German scientists? They were all Jewish,forced to leave
Russians got some scientists about 100 and they worked on Russian space program,But Americans got Von Braun and all his documents
No. Not at all.I do know the Americans got around 112 German scientists that were working on rocket technology.Werner Von Braun was one of them.He decided to surrender to the Americans,his brother spoke English and helped him.Where you get that the "Americans only kidnapped 1 Germany" is beyond me
"No enemy bomber can reach Berlin. If one reaches Berlin, my name is not Goering. You may call me Meyer."
-Hermann Meyer, September, 1939
Okay...Meyer
Hoi4
I know where you got that from. That book has been called into question for it's exaggerations.
The day Hitler decided to invade the USSR and not England, his fate was sealed. 80% of German casualties occurred on the Eastern front.
He knew there was no way to invade England. For these simple reasons: 1) he didnt have air supremacy 2) the German navy was vastly outnumbered and out gunned by the British 3) not enough landing craft 4) no enough resources to supply the troops
@@Speedymisha All are true except 4.
What resources was he lacking in the time periods in which Operation Sealion wouldn've taken place? At that point in the war he had oil reserves and all the supplies he required for a huge land war in Britain.
A land war in Britain would've required much less time and resources than the Eastern front required.
@@adamanderson3042 Well said. Plus... if we're honest here... Britain had the world's best navy (japan and usa were up and coming but britain was still #1 prewar), they had a decent airforce (RAF)... thats it. Their army was small and depleted, relying mostly on its colonies for manpower. The problem was air and naval superiority the axis did not have... If it weren't for that, Britain itself would have probably been invaded easier than France..
Hitler never wanted to go to war with Britain. He didn't even expect them to go to war over Poland. And the Soviets were VERY close to being defeated. the ukrainians HATED the Russians and the soviet government. He could have conscripted them. Had he not been tied in the west, Soviets would have been toast.
England still would’ve been a disaster.
Because no Country on earth could go to war against the US, UK and USSR all at once and hope to win. Basically Germany was fighting 6 other Germanys when you factor Manpower, resources and manufacturing capacity. The US alone had twice Germany's population , 5 times their resources and 4x their manufacturing capacity.
Even more, but Hitler shouldn;t declare the war to the United States, then the war would be easily won
Pity their logistics were hampered by a designed lack of imagination.
@Hugo Pointillart It's a known fact that Roosevelt wanted to get involved in the war with Russia and England scampering in the face of the German onslaught till late 1942 and 1943 he saw that as a chance to assert his supremacy by playing a big role in the war but Congress and the American public didn't find any reason to involve themselves in the war in the first place..Pearl Harbour attacks presented a great opportunity for the Govt and Roosevelt to gain support from American public and resources from the Congress for arms, ammunition in order not just help the Allies win the war but show them as the biggest contributors to its success thus giving the United States an opportunity to show the world their stature and clout, which was in the time to come was challenged by USSR which was then came to be known as the Cold War.
Yeah. They only lasted so long due to incompetence of the allies
@Hugo Pointillart Actually, the fight in the East might well have gone for Germany if Germany did not have to tie down vast resources in the West -- 100 divisions in occupation, hundreds of submarines, much of the strength of the Luftwaffe -- and if the US and UK had not shipped vast supplies to the USSR.
I always laugh when I hear Brits complaining about the US being late in rescuing the UK from a fight that it got itself into but then found it could not win without US help. When did the UK become a nation of ungrateful whiners?
Hitler to Mannerheim; "If one of my generals had stated that any nation had 35,000 tanks, I'd have said: 'You, my good sir, you see everything twice or ten times.You are crazy, you are seeing ghosts.'". Hitler underestimated the USSR and their winters. The window of opportunity for the Nazis to defeat the USSR was very narrow.
@James Williams finally somoene said it....learn from history and do not repeat it ;or adapt heavily to ride with it😉
No, he had no window at all. Our goverment at the time was too stable and could have absorbed even more loses in manpower and territory. It is most likely that Stalin would go on fighting even if Nazis were marching past Urals mountains. Which is hard to imagine since infrasrucure there is just horrificly bad and distances are too big. Same story with Napoleon. Nicolas II goverment however was another story all together.
Probably could’ve invaded earlier than June.
Yup
Great talk, and I agreed with all Dr Roberts' points. However, one important element was missing. Germany had no oil. It struggled by making substitutes from its coal reserves but this was never enough or of sufficient quality. The invasion of USSR was as much to do with getting hold of the oil fields in the south as anything else. It's also the reason Hitler did not want war with Britain. While our army and air force was lacking investment our so-called senior service was big enough to blockade Germany and prevent oil imports. Lack of fuel severely impeded the Nazi effort throughout the war and is one of the reasons they lost.
Interesting point, There were squads of German Luftwaffe personnel visiting Allied aircraft crash sites solely for the purpose of recovering aviation fuel and oil for use in their own fighters.
I think you are overlooking the Germans ability to get oil from Romania. Yes the 1942 campaign was toward the Caucasus oil fields but the initial invasion had other objectives.
@@pauloneil8531 No - they were chronically short of fuel throughout the war. This hampered their ability to mechamise their logistics and greatly reduced the impact of the Luftwaffe and Panzer divisions.
As I said Paul, I accept all Dr Roberts' points including Nazi aspirations to wipe out the USSR's Jews, to wipe out communism and create desirable living space for the 'master race'. But unlike his generals, Hitler wanted to prioritise the push to the Caucasus and warned them that if they failed to reach their goal they would run out of fuel. Romanian oil was only a small part of the solution. They needed Baku and its adjacent regions. But it was so far south the Nazis' eastern flank was hopelessly exposed and the supply lines overstretched.
why didn't they build trains that could run on Soviet rails? That was a big issue for them too
Vow! thank you very much for this absolutely well-constructed and entertaining speech. I wish I were half as good a speaker as Dr. Roberts is.
A most excellent presentation by Dr. Roberts. Thank you for posting this.
you are welcome
sleep good, UNTIL YOU DON'T
Short version.
No country can beat the US, UK and USSR at the same time.
Afghanistan could!!!! :)
@@Vedioviswritingservice Ouch, That hurt....truth usually does.
@@Vedioviswritingservice "Afghanistan could!!!! :)"
How would you know since Afghanistan has never been at war with those three countries at the same time.
Plus, Afghanistan as the country and government was defeated in like one week if that.
If your definition of 'beating' somebody is that once you are militarily and institutionally defeated and replaced, you still have pockets of armed guerrilla fighters continuing to resist, then shit, France and Poland both beat Germany long before the USSR, USA and UK.
@@Vedioviswritingservice I think you forgot the key words, "At the same time".
@Brandon McGowan Wrong
Hitler would listen to his generals for hours but he was texting on his iPhone most of the time.
:- |
It was Blackberrys back then, pretty sure.
@@rogerpattube Idiots
He was texting while driving!
*sexting
His generals weren't always right. There are times they told him something couldn't be done only for him to do it. Hitler was actually more competent than most people give him credit for. He more or so began to fall apart the older that he got.
Hitler was a politician, not a military strategist. As the presenter says over and over, he made military decisions using political ideology as his primary set of principles. Of course, this would never happen in the United States...I mean, no President would EVER interfere with military commanders in the field for political reasons *COUGH* LBJ *COUGH*
Call him whatever you want to but do not forget what brutal harm he did to so many innocent people; Don't forget that all his right-hand cronies, ~all turned to the allies for a way out after all their immortal actions; They cried and begged and killed themselves and their own kids; Don't forget,,, If killing off entire specific races of people AND then thinking you are gonna breed your own super race does not make you the #1 psychopathic of all time, what does? What is madness then?
I'd say he was an nco not a military strategist and an ideologue not a politician.
Meth got to his brain
A real charmer Told his people we are a great people.The master race
Look at all our advances in Sciences All those Noble prizes we won
Told them We Germans don't deserve to suffer like this
I think you have missed out a slab of history and facts. You have missed the point of the lecture.
Very interesting perspective. I enjoyed this very much. Thank you.
A great contribution to my understanding of the war.
I hope not, the guy is wrong on almost all counts
Very well presented - thank you.
Why would anyone thumb down this? It’s a history lecture..... what on earth could you be annoyed it?
Skinheads
The russkies don't get enough credit. The war on the western front was a skirmish compared to the carnage of the east
Russian winter got Hitler,his weapons froze.Stalin had spies in Siberia worried about a Japanese attack that never came These troops were trained for winter fighting Had Hitler gotten to Stalingrad during better weather conditions, he would have gotten all the oil he needed, and he would have fought to last NAZI
russkies got too much credit, they just throw men into machine guns untill they got to Germany. good ol' stalin
LOL@@darealbukchoyboi
Fools Gold Found He talked about the eastern front for like half the lecture.
Russia helped start the war, so it'd be hard to credit them with ending it.
I always thought it was inevitable that they would lose, Hitler's grand fuckups just made it quicker.
Fascinating lecture. Thank you so very much...
Didn't Germany have the entire British Army cornered and could have annihilated them all at Dunkirk, but instead allowed them to live and escape?... If they didn't do that maybe things would have happened differently.
@Daniel Cutbush
good point
I haven't really seen this explanation proposed, but I think it bears consideration. Hitler had a lot of respect for the British soldiers from his WWI experiences. 300,000 British troops with their backs to the Channel would not have been a walkover. The Germans still had to face considerable French forces reorganizing to the south. Every German casualty and every lost tank would be one less to finish mopping up the French. Hitler may not have considered the losses of an assault worth the gains. After all, British troops withdrawn to Britain, largely without their equipment, were effectively out of the battle for France.
This is a bit of myth. The germans were still bombing the hell out of them at Dunkirk. They stopped because they had outrun their supply lines and needed to rearm. In my opinion Hitler didn't just let them go but was waiting for his supply lines and would have captured them if he could.
@@samlusby4576 I am more inclined to agree with this point of view. Another thing that adds credence to an Operational pause to regroup, refit and rearm is that no one, including the Royal Navy, thought that Britain could pull over 400,000 troops out of a town with no working port facilities. Prior to the Operation the RN thought it might be able to pull between 40 and 80,000 men off the mole.
Given this, it is probably likely that no one really thought most of those trapped troops would be going anywhere, so its likely that Hitler believed his forces would have the time to rearm, re-equip, and move in to mop that pocket up when his forces were back up to close to full strength and capability.
The main reason yes i think so...but ideology or what not
Because dictators always think they know everything and overrule the better advice of others who obviously know better.
The narcisstic psychology that propelled these individuals into power thus becomes their own undoing.
I'm glad they lost, otherwise many of us would not be here.
i.e. Dictators gonna dictate...
Hitler famously spurned the advice of his generals, intelligence services and scientists - confident he knew more than all of them. Remind you of anyone?
Trump?
@LivingOnLifeDyingfromLife187 incorrect. A tyrant has been an illegitimate ruler.
@LivingOnLifeDyingfromLife187 haha, your answer before hitting the edit button was quite different. Nice try ...for an American I suppose
Why Hitler Lost the War - Actual version:
You can't win a war on two world powers which can beat you in production, logistics, manpower, and energy/oil production at the same time.
@jomax clux Even in the great depression the US was way more economically productive than Germany.
What you people need to realise is that the USA has like 4-6 times more people and like 13 times more natural resources and farmland than Germany.
It's not because Germany's economy was shit or bad, Germany was handicapped in the exact same way as if the current USA went to war with 4 identical clone USA's.
There is strength and power in higher numbers.
@jomax clux I don't know. It depends on your viewpoint. But for social programs I don't think that was true. I think that the US and Europe had identical safety nets until the end of WW2 when Europe increased them and started to create single payer systems.
facts, this guy thinks that analyzing specific examples of german blunders would change the fact that they were outproduced, outmanned, and outgunned. They simply could not have won a total victory against the allies.
@@ethanstewart3292 It is hard to argue, whether Germany "could have won WW2", since there was no one thing that brought defeat. Rather it was a series of bad decisions. Was there a chance if the Nazis had limited the war to Europe? would coordination with Japan had significant impact? Was Hitler a lizard? Well maybe, but it is hard to say.
@jomax clux WWII as we define it in the West started in 1939. USA did not enter until 1941. The Great Depression was catalyzed by the 1929 stock market crash, and was extended by a series of bad government decisions for almost ten years. The US was well on the way to an economic into a recovery before 1939, and the US population had been significantly higher than England and Germany's for decades before that.
Had US not entered the war, Russia would still have wiped out Germany almost by themselves, but it would have cost then another ten million casualties, and taken an additional two years.
Thank you for sharing. A very interesting analysis.
great explanation!
Excellent and thoughtful lecture. I learned much. Thank You Dr. Roberts.
You should consult other sources if you learned much, as he is wrong on the majority of his points.
Great point with examples! A nice job done. :)
Cheers for the earrape at the end.
Blue Snail scared the living shit outta me. My head hurts now
He pick an idiot as an ally-Mussolini
@@georgeevangel2616 That "idiot" invented fascism, the only known cure to communist subversion.
@@Stormvermin-bx1lh liberalism
@Phi6er lol
Werner Heisenberg was in charge of creation of german atomic bomb. When asked after the war why he failed to create one he said he did it purposefully as he did not wanted the nazi to have a nuclear bomb.
Yeah. That's probably what I'd say too.
Sublime presentation and truely interesting!
The orator does have some valid points but he is mostly off on a lot of them. Hitler was an ideologue but not all of his motivations came from ideology. For example, his view that Hitler invaded the Soviet Union purely on racism and anti-semitism. Germany came out of the Weimar Republic without much oil and had to produce synthetic oil from coal which is an expensive process.
Oil is one of the vital resources that is needed to maintain a mechanized military and for economic consumption for the economy in general. Hitler was an international economic expropriator and looter foremost when it came to military strategy. His world view isn't just that of racism but also cultures/nations struggle between other cultures/nations for the world's natural resources which is one of the bases of fascist autarky. The British had imposed a blockade on Germany which forced the state to pursue other sources of oil and that happens to be the Caucasus. Outside of the Caucasus and Russia, the only source of oil was Romania but that wasn't enough. The blockade would block imports by sea. Hitler wanted to control the oil fields of the region to switch his focus back at Britain.
Germany did not have sufficient transport of materials and equipment. Their standard leFH 18 10.5cm howitzers were towed by horses and they didn't have enough heavy howitzers. That makes logical sense because a tank without fuel and oil is useless while a towed howitzer that is light enough can at least be moved by horses. Horses are not preferred for moving things around obviously because they are too slow. Hitler prioritized resources over tactics than his top generals. Hitler was no economic genius but he did have financial ministers/advisors, etc, so he had some grasp on the state of the economy of the nation and the military. He could either cease militarism or he could try to take over more resources to maintain an army. This is a very similar situation to the Saddam Hussien invading Kuwait in the 1990s. You have belligerent states who want a military but can't afford it, so in order to maintain it, they need to invest more wars to try to acquire more resources to sustain it for immediate satisfaction.
The reason why Germany lost Operation Barbarossa was the focus on major cities such as Moscow which was not a good idea for a "quick war" because Blitzkrieg or tank tactics for that matter are not that effective in urban combat. Urban combat suits the defenders the most especially if they are more familiar with the environment. Cities were not major sources of resources, in fact, stuff like oil was imported from other regions into such cities such as the Volga River feeding Stalingrad from the South. By pursuing urban combat, the Germans opened themselves to setbacks such as "the grain elevator fight" in Stalingrad. Things like tank fire, light artillery fire, could not get the Russian defenders out of there. They would be in a drawn-out battle and allow the Soviets time to counter-attack while the Germans were in the least advantageous position basically nullifying the shock to the enemy. The Germans never surveyed the urban environment either which is not a good idea when fighting in unfamiliar territory. Even still, successfully capturing Moscow wouldn't guarantee Soviet surrender and it would be costly to do so. The German command thought of the France victory and had no grasp of the ferocity the Soviets had to defend their land. German generals also failed to realize how much of a disadvantage urban combat would be in a crunch.
About Japan-Germany cooperation, the orator is correct. There wasn't much cooperation between the two and because of that, the US got into the war which was disastrous for the Axis because, at the time, the US was the greatest producer of oil by far. The US did not use horses for their towed artillery, they didn't need to. They used mechanized primary movers instead. The US could power a fleet of ships without much problems or a war effort.
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this british 'professor' sucks rabbi dick
I agree. This is a very lazy position to analyze the war from. “Hitler was not insane, he was a crazy Nazi.” That is a big difference right there.
i mean the invasion of the USSR was mostly due to ideology. Ever heard of Generalplan Ost? Do you know what Hitler thought of the Slavs, or what he wanted done to them?
Treye Billups the “ideology” was secondary to the lack of oil and food Germany needed to be a self sufficient country.
I haven't watched the video yet but I am going to guess that going to war with everyone at the same time had something to do with it!
@Alien Alien Invading Poland, northern Europe, and beginning a genocide are NO REASON to go to war?
I enthusiastically concur! Just like Daesh at war with all miscreants, i.e., every human being, Muslim or whatever, who ain't a freak of their own sick sect... Or like the narcissistic Orange Buffoon, enabled by the decadent GOP party & empowered by voting Deplorables, at war with China on his own, befriending mortal enemies, thrashing allied economies, weakening fellow Western democracies. The good Dow Jones news won't last, the mortal debt and accented inequalities will before long badly bite Uncle Sam on the arse... The fat egomaniac will fall eventually and assuredly hurt many folks still wise, brave and free.
@@chrisafp071 Holo.ho@x
@Alien Alien Do you think of yourself as a troll?
@Alien Alien I remember a day 42 years ago when I noticed a book of German propaganda that was on the shelves of a library in California. It showed a group of dead people in German uniforms. Now, I knew at the time that they were actually murdered Jews that the Nazis had dressed in German army uniforms to make propaganda that Poland had attacked Germany first. The book was in English. I brought it to the attention of the librarian that there was some wretched Nazi propaganda on the shelves. I knew that it was unlikely that there was someone so stupid as to believe it (after all, it was 1977 and people knew about Hitler, the Nazis, and the war), but it still angered me. Are you really so stupid as to believe Nazi propaganda in 2019? I somewhat doubt that you do, so I suspect that you must be a troll.
An old german soilder once told me "Always be sure to polish the backs of your shoes because thats the last thing people see of you as your walking away" Old Hugo Hopfliecsh might have been on the wrong side in 43, but he was sharp as a tack.
4 out of every 5 Wehrmacht soldiers killed in WWII died on the eastern front.
Citation needed.
Anti Freddy Krueger not really, considering most of the German casualties were on the eastern front.
@@ousarlxsfjsbvbg8588 Most as in 51% or 80%?
Yes. And they were fighting at odds of 12 Communist scum led Russian Soldier to 1 Wehrmacht Soldier.
He could not have produced 400 subs while rearming the army and the airforce. The industrial capacity was not large enough.
Could have if the resources put into battleships were used. Raeder wanted ships, Donetz wanted subs but was denied.
@@rogerpattube Takes more than resources, when talking about Naval Buildup you also have to take into account the production facilities themselves. Fact is prior to the war Germany simply did not have the slipways required to build subs in such high numbers.
Granted they buit more slipways during the war, and you do not need the kind of facilities to build submarines that are required to build Battleships, but the fact still remains that you *do* need those slipways, you do need those drydocks, and Germany simply did not have the Naval building capacity at the time to come anywhere near close to building that number of U-Boats prior to the war.
Pretty much the only two nations that DID have that kind of Naval production capacity were Britain and the US.
The "Atlantic Wall" used over 1.1 million tons of Steel...worth over 4000 subs...
I look forward to time traveling and showing someone this video.
Excellent, concise reasoning. Dr. Roberts has a talent for distilling a vast amount of facts to a sharp and coherent argument of general truths rather than mere generalizations.
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Kevin McCaffrey
Agree, west side war was just a invasion to prevent ussr taking Germany and station US permanently in Europe .
Beside fighting Wehrmacht , committed horrible civilian genocide of German civilians and permanently occupied Germany to our days.
Contribution to wining the war was just negligible compared to use who won the war already. We US, entered European theatre one year before the end of the war....
DrRonerts is in the service of rewriting history. Mainly nonsense.
Brilliant talk.
There is a more simple answer.
They were a mechanized army that started WW2 with 2 months worth of fuel.
Not a problem if they have Friends.
@@WadcaWymiaru The Bankers bought off any potential "Friends". Europe and "Great" B is paying dearly for it now.
Hardly surprising that an upper class Brit "historian" neglects to mention that Kim Philby was feeding Ultra decryptions to Stalin, who on occasion read them even before Churchill did. This was a decisive factor at Kursk, and thereafter informed the Soviet strategy during the German retreat, speeding up the Soviet advance considerably.
Superb.
wonderful presentation.expert.
Great insight!
The Nazi party did not just include Hitler. He talks about this as all being the plot and ideology of one man. For instance, when talking about Ukraine, the harsh occupation plans were embedded not only in the ideology of the party, but also in the army. There is one crucial thing that Roberts does not include in criticizing this aspect: The Wehrmacht relied on the territory it occupied. There had been made no plans to provide sufficient rations and supplies to the army. In fact, the logistics were virtually ignored given that they believed the war to be over before Christmas. The plan was to simply take what they needed from the locals. It was this use of forced labour and food confiscation that turned the locals against the occupiers. The Nazi party and the army had decided to avoid the situation that they thought made them lose WW1: unrest at home. They wanted to maintain a comfortable life for the German civilian population. This necessitated a harsh occupation policy.